North Carolina’s a good place to leave if you’re seeking melancholy. In London they said it was full of crazy people, and of course they’re right: shouldn’t we crazies stick together?
On my first trip to North Carolina we stopped to see you, Luke. Your voice had changed (mine wouldn’t for years) and our height difference had never been greater. You were playing violin and soccer; your dad hadn’t vanished yet. You were golden. You probably still are.
How do you stay golden? How do you leave the ones you love? How do you find someone whose last name is Smith?
The National Museum of Lara’s Boyfriends has an entire wing devoted to Todd, whom she dated for like one term. Surely you understand what that is.
It’s total bullshit.
The lone half-case it devotes to her relationship with Barry is unfair: some leading laralogists have noted that he actually gave her a mix tape on the Spanish Club trip six months beforehand, and that she didn’t see anyone seriously in the intervening period. Arguably, they were together that whole time.
And what’s with these “apocryphal” exhibits about her dating a girl in college? They can’t provide one photo?
Come on.
They meet atop the sixth of eleven mounds, the reliefs cut into their chalky flesh buried in the howling storm. The great dogs bell and shake off the snow already crusting on their flanks; Dog Shouting and See Me grip their saddle horns to stay seated.
“There isn’t enough life on this ice-rock to fill a cruiser’s hold,” snorts Dog Shouting. “The traps are set. I’m going back.”
“I’ll follow shortly. There’s a piece of moonstone that hit the ground near here.”
Dog Shouting frowns at him.
“I want to check it out,” shrugs See Me. “It won’t take long.”
Triumphantly, Jarno proves that P = NP (elliptical curves, in case you’re wondering, yes, again, seriously). The university is full of cameras for about two weeks; he gets the prize check from the Clay Institute, and later he’ll probably split a Nobel.
He spends part of the money on a cabin at Shadow Mountain Lake and the rest to name a reading room at the library. A million dollars isn’t so much, actually. A little more than the value of his 401(k).
Some grad students use his work to break a Minesweeper record. Jarno fishes, and thinks about birds in flight.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
He used to get his hopes up, in the first few centuries. Around 380 he’d actually scraped together a little money working as a messenger, and there was this girl, and then her father got pissy and sailed halfway to Cartagena before weighting down Longinus’s manacles and dropping him overboard.
Longinus held his breath on the long dark walk back to shore. He had a beard by the time he emerged. He could have just breathed water, yes, but have you ever been to the ocean floor? You’d hold it too, if you spent two weeks neck-deep in fish shit.
“Wij hebben twee Fried Chicken Kippenhamburger Wrap Subs, een kom nodig Dippin’ Bacon en–beste, wilde u dessert? Een Battered Marihuanabrownie, tevreden.”
“Zou u Mayonaise Fries gerechten of een drank met dat vandaag willen proberen?” says Roderick rotely. “Dank u, zal het uit juist zijn.” He shuts off the register, taps Landry to help him and starts bagging up the trash.
“Do you ever wonder if they know real Unitedstatesian food is nothing like this?” sighs Roderick on the walk back from the dumpster, shaking down his cigarettes.
“What?” says Landry, taking the pack and knocking one out. “Yes it is.”
2038 and they’re all out on the streets, sneakered and bearded. They don’t care that it’s January; it never gets cold now anyway. It’s almost time.
Weintraub is one of the wandering crowd, Vinge paperback in hand, but he’s starting to get worried. It should have happened by now. What’s their UTC offset here, anyway?
“Sir?” shouts a blogarazzo, camgun leveled at him. “Are you involved in this activity? Can you tell me what you’re all waiting for?”
“The Sing,” says Weintraub, tears tracking his face, “the Sing Sing Sing,” and stares at his wristwatch for the first sign of life.
“I eat apples, most days,” says Roger, “because there is nothing more disappointing than an overripe nectarine. Half the time that’s how you get them, unless they’re underripe and hard as rubber; you have to either slice one to test every day or trust your crappy luck. You can’t tell by looking or touching, and the zone of ripeness is so small. But when you get a good one, they’re the best fruit in the world.”
Holly’s amused. “Did you have a point?”
“Is that what it’s like to like boys sometimes?”
“Well,” she says, “no.”
“I’m hungry again,” Rose mutters.
The Washouts are that band with two bassists. They would consider a keyboardist, well, if she was on the right wavelength? Just no guitars.
It’s a thing.
But by the time they get their interview with Mona from Velocity Weekly they’re so past that. “I can’t blame the fans for clinging to the gimmick,” says the bassist, “the ones from when we were starting out, you know.”
“And when was that?” Mona asks.
He thinks. “Saturday?”
Mona’s only here because she’s crushing hard on the drummer, but there’s this goth girl clinging to him like a wad of white library paste.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Cool fingers press into her lower back. “Here?”
“Yes.” Proserpina grips the bench.
“And here.”
“Yes! You already–” She exhales, wishing the woman would just sock her in the jaw.
“Quite routine at this age,” says the nurse. “I’ll get a hot water bottle and a Bayer. You’ll be fine by morning. Ten girls with the same thing this week,” the nurse winks to Miss Havisham, “and four didn’t even have a test the next day.”
She bustles off to cabinets. “You didn’t tell her why I’m dressed,” says Proserpina quietly.
Miss Havisham’s silent eyes track three dots on Proserpina’s arm.